FULL MOON? WIND? TUNA and ROOSTERS DON’T CARE!

MEXICAN MINUTE VIDEO REPORT (a little longer than normal!)

The Big Picture and the Rest of the Story…

All by herself!!! Peggy Miller’s first time and she rocked this big 70-pound-class tuna all by herself for almost 90 minutes! She and husband Ken are from Montana on their first visit to La Paz!

Captain Armando helps pose with a happy Dave Schiefelbein of Colorado who was on his first day of fishing and battled this 80 pound-class yellowfin tuna for almost 2 hours. His first ever!

Jed Hinkle from MONTANA (Thanks, Jed!) seems to have a knack for big roosters every time he visits. Just off the Las Arenas lighthouse he caught and released this rooster estimated (by the captain) and 95-pounds. It’s bigger than it looks! Jed is a really tall guy!

So many first-timers did so well this week. Laura Brunell hadn’t even fished before until about 2 weeks before her La Paz trip and her very first fish right off-the-bat is this hefty yellowfin she fought for almost 90 minutes all by herself. Boyfriend Blake Warren got a 55-pound rooster caught-and-released as well.

We had an incredible week of big pompano and this is one of the biggest! Nina Le from New Mexico holds up this tasty species of the jack family!

Tom Mullican has been visiting us for a number of years now twice a year and after catching this nice bull told me he had NEVER caught a big bull dorado in all that time! Tom’s from Dallas, TX.

A Washington smile from Jerry White who only had one day to fish but made it a good one with about 5 species of fish including his first roosterfish. The fish was released.

Two firsts! Kyndall Hinkle from Montana gets her first marlin with Captain Gerardo and also our first marlin of the season as well! Just outside of Bahia de los Suenos/ Muertos. On live bait! The fish could not be released.

These two had a great 3 days of fishing. Jeff and Patty Killian from Oregon show off a day of variety fishing over the reefs that produced pompano, snapper, white bonito, amberjack and pargo!

Captain Armando was on fire this week! First-timer from Arizona, Russel was on this fish over 3 hours! His arms were “rubber!”

First roosterfish is a good one. Right off the beach, Ken Miller, caught and released this nice fish!

Tom Reed was able to squeeze in a short trip that produced this quality yellowfin on the first day that he brought back to Tailhunter Restaurant for some poke and sashime!

Kyndall and Jed Hinkle were part of an incredible week of big pompano fishing. Great eating fish! That’s Punta Perrico in the background.

First-timers had it going on this week! Brian Dang’s first time trip kicked out this nice yellowfin tuna and a big smile on the beach. Brian is from New Mexico.

Captain Armando, Patty Killian and a nice barred pargo!

One off the bucket list for Tom Mullican. He has an amberjack in the left hand and a rainbow runner in his right. The rainbow runners are related to yellowtail. This is a big one!

Captain Victor helps Wayne Krafft from Washington with his rooster that they released after the photo. Roosters were center stage this week.

Another big pompano in the boat for Nina! First thing at sunrise!

Christoper Le and Captain Jorge with a thumbs-up on a nice rack of pompano on the cleaning table!

I was worried this week when I saw the full moon and the probability that it would also combine with strong winds…again. I’m not usually so worried about the moon phases as I am with wind, but in tandem they can be havoc with tides, currents and consequently the fishing.

However, we might have had one of the best weeks of the fishing season!

In all honesty, we did not catch as many fish as previous weeks, but what we lost in quantity, we made up for with quality with the largest fish of the season. And, frankly, if you’re tied onto a single big fish for 1 or 2 hours, you don’t have time to catch a bunch of small fish! But that’s exactly what happened.

We still had a tremendous amount of variety in terms of species that included amberjack; yellowtail; 3 species of pargo (pargo liso / pargo mulatto / dog-tooth) ; cabrilla; yellow snapper, red snapper, bonito (common and white bonito); jack crevalle and wahoo (caught, but not landed) .

We also got our first marlin of the season!

However, we also got into several days of the largest pompano I have ever seen in several decades here with big hefty 10-pound fish.

In those same areas, the roosterfish came on strong with fish between 40 and 90 pounds getting caught and released. By far our best roosterfish week of the season with some sightings or entire schools of roosterfish crashing baits along the beaches. One of my captains said, there could have been “hundreds” of big roosterfish in one school!

The big highlight was our first solid week of tuna. And these were NOT football fish. There were those mean 40-100 pound yellowfin that have a tendency to even break strong men! Most of these fish took 1-3 hours on our lighter live bait tackle and most of the fish taken in shallower water.

The fun thing was that it seemed that many of the larger fish were hooked by first-timers or the wives and girlfriends! It was great to see them grit it out and all of them enjoyed it! There were even larger fish that were battled and came unbuttoned or the lines broke after long fights!

For alot of folks, it was their biggest fish…or their first fish…or a new species they had never caught…or the longest fight…

ROOSTERFISH STARTING TO COME ON!

The MEXICAN MINUTE VIDEO REPORT

THE BIG PICTURE and the REST of the STORY…

One day to fish and the had some fun! Wayne Krafft and Jerry White with some nice snapper including a hefty dog-tooth! They also caught and released 2 roosterfish.

Patty and Jeff Killian had quite a first day with 3 big roosterfish caught and released. A photo of one of the other fish is below.

Captain Joel gives Patty Killian a hand on one of their 3 big roosterfish caught at Espirito Santo Island.

Big cabrilla right up close and shallow to the rocks for Don Busse, our Lakewood CA amigo.

Yoshi and his family live in Mexico and were visiting La Paz for the first time and made the most of the one day they went out fishing.

Big teeth and a big mouth…on the fish! Not John Chung who has the good smile and knows this dog-tooth is gonna end up in the kitchen!

A big thumps-up for Jeff Killian and Captain Alfredo with a big cabrilla estimated at 30 pounds caught near Pilot Cove north of La Paz.

Pancho had a nice big snapper!

It gets a little better every week as we move towards warmer conditions and better fishing, but I guess we’re not outta the woods yet. To co-incide with all the bad weather north of the border, it was reflected in some gusty winds and choppy water that affected the fishing and definitely the comfort level.

So, we had some good fishing…and we had some not-so-good fishing.

Some was weather related. Even tho’ the sun is out, if it’s choppy and windy, it’s hard to get live sardines or, to get to some of the fishing spots. Or, because of the winds, and because we are blessed to usually fish so close to shore, the waters are turned over and murkier than normal. So, there were some off-days.

Some of the other days were much better.

Big cabrilla, pargo, amberjack, triggerfish, pompano and snapper are still willing and hungry in the rocks and over the reefs in shallow water. More dorado are starting to show up. The wahoo are still biting although we hooked them, but all the hooked fish were lost or came unbuttoned.

It takes some chopper teeth to mark up the hard body of a Rapala like this!

We know the fish are there. Purple and black Rapalas and Yo-Zuri Magnums are still the best although the wahoo are willing to eat live bait as well.

The wahoo and even pargo like these things!

I will also officially declare roosterfish season open! The bigger boys have started showing up with fish running 30-50 pounds and we’re seeing much larger fish as well.

One of three big roosters caught-and-released by Jeff Killian.

Two of our anglers scored a triple rooster-day with fish between 40 and 50 pounds and all released. Other nice roosters were lost. Check out the photos in this report of Jeff and Patty Killian from Oregon who were fishing with Captain Joel and hooked 3 pretty roosters!

Jeff White and Wayne Krafft from Washington got the double rooster and released two fish as well!

INSHORE FISHING PRODUCES VARIED SPECIES

MEXICAN MINUTE VIDEO REPORT

The Big Picture and the Rest of the Story…

Bruce Bonsack caught what might be our largest roosterfish of the young season just outside of Bahia Muertos. The fish was released.

Our fishing ace amigo, Roger Thompson, was dragging a purple Rapala near Cerralvo Island when he got this beautiful wahoo to chomp. You can tell, it was a little chilly!

Rosario Hastings had not spent a whole lot of time on the water and was nervous about going fishing, but you can see the excitement after a 2-hour battle with our largest dorado of the season. She was fishing just north of La Paz towards Espirito Santo Island.

Another good day for Erik and Ethan Skinner who spent a full week of fishing with us and although some tough fish broke off near Espirito Santo Island, they got this nice jack crevalle and cabrilla.

Captain Jorge with Don Busse from Lakewood CA with a great variety including a huge pompano, cabrilla and pargo.

The right kind! That’s a nice colorful barred pargo for Ethan Skinner who had quite a week of fishing.

Check out Captain Jorge and the nice pompano and pargo.

Big smiles and a big amberjack for Dave Lindell and Captain Armando.

Captain Pancho and Don Busse with a sizeable cabrlla and a hawkfish also called a “china maru.”

We had a nice run of hawkfish also called “china maru” along with a cabrilla. All great eating.

Can’t ask for a better day of inshore fishing with pompano, pargo, snapper and cabrilla off the reef.

Bryan Duran and his amigos only had 1 day to fish, but did well on pompano, pargo, sierra, snapper and others.

Quite a nice mix of fish this past week with nice sunny weather and relatively calm seas. Most of the fishing action centered over the inshore reefs and rocks where a plethora of different species kept rods bent…and hearts broken as fish often took frustrated anglers into the rocks.

So, sometimes fishing was good, but the actual “catching” was not as good with so many lost fish! But, it still made for some fun times.

Add to that a real nice jag of some big pompano; some brutish jack crevalle, common and white bonito and quite a few hawkfish also known as china maru that are similar to cabrilla but with bright blue designs on it’s face and flanks.

In the same areas, we lost some big yellowtail that couldn’t be stopped on both iron and bait plus slow-trolled Rapalas and Yo-Zuris, but those same lures also produced a couple of nice wahoo in shallow water up to about 35 pounds.

Dorado action is also picking up with some larger fish taken near Espirito Santo Island where sargasso weed is starting to appear which attracts bait fish and consequently more dorado as the waters get warmer.

Daytime temps have been really pleasant in the high 80’s and it’s starting to get a bit humid but conditions for the coming week look good!

BAHIA MAGDALENA REPORT

Erik and Ethan Skinner spent almost a week fishing with us in the mangroves of Bahia Magdalena taking over a dozen species including pargo, snapper, halibut, dog-tooth, spotted bay bass, triggerfish and corvina. Most of it was chronicled in last week’s report.

However, their last days they had an incredible snap of corvina! Check out the photos. They released many many fish and donated many more and still took home several ice chests of fish.

Ethan with dad, Erik, and a nice sized corvina. You can see the mangroves in the backk

Back at the cleaning table with nice load of corvina plus bass, snapper and pargo.

NOW THAT’S MORE LIKE IT!

MEXICAN MINUTE VIDEO FISHING REPORT

The Big Picture and the Rest of the Story…

From Washington, Steve Hastings was out with Captain Victor from the Tailhunter Fleet and did the hat trick with 3 wahoo not far off the rocks that went 25-35 pounds. He also got some tasty white bonito as well.

Jeff Sakuda from Cypress CA makes one to two trips to La Paz to fish with Tailhunter for almost 20 years and loves fishing with Captain Jorge. One day produced two wahoo near Cerralvo Island. The largest one taken on a purple Rapala Xrap and the other hit a live sardine.

Big roosterfish right off the rocks by Mark Bonsack from Washington. The fish was taken on live bait and released. These are the first large ones we’ve seen this year…right about on time!

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Now, this is a fun day of fishing! Our good friends and anglers for many many years, Jeff Sakuda and Marianne Sugawara with a full rack of spring fish including white bonito, snapper and pargo.

Yup…some yellowtail still around. Our Captain Pancho does the honors! Hamachi for the grill!

Aloha boys from Maui shaka the camera. They only had one day to fish but got into some action. That’s Dean Badoyen and Ed with pargo, cabrilla, a huge trigger fish and snapper.

Jeff and Captain Jorge with the 2nd wahoo of the day. This one fell to a live sardine.

Yellowtail are still hitting on-and-off near Cerralvo Island. Mark Bonsack from Washington was fishing with the Tailhunter Fleet and caught this stocky forktail.

Trophy cabrilla headed into the box for Paul Nagata from San Francisco.

After a couple of so-so weeks where the weather and winds dictated our fishing, we finally got in a solid week of good weather and consequently better fishing. There were still some lingering pesky winds, but overall a great time to be out on the water with good action and some good quality to the fish as well.

It also helps that we’ve got more fishermen now that the season is on too!

For sure, there were still some ups and downs and some low-points where the bite dropped off or only bonito bit. However…inshore fishing over reefs, rocks and structure continued produce the most action as is typical of this time of the year.

Our guys who worked closer to shore and in the shallows saw good action and good quality on big snapper, big cabrilla, large triggerfish, amberjack, yellowtail and both barred pargo and pargo mulato. Lots of larger fish lost in the rocks too…maybe half of all the fish hooked, but no shortage of biters!

Captain Armando with long-time amigo, Dave Lindell from Pendleton, Oregon with a nice amberjack in hand and quite a variety on the board including snapper, bonito and cabrilla

Paul has big smiles with his yellowtail!

The same areas produced jack crevalle, several kinds of bonito (including the good eating white-bonito) and still kicked out yellowtail as well up to about 25-pounds.

…and a jack crevalle! Lots of fun when you get into a school of these that can number into the hundreds. There’s a reason why the Mexican name for them is “TORO” which means “bull.” They are scrappy bulldogs when hooked.

We also hit our first big roosterfish of the season too. We’ve gotten some smaller punk fish, but we got into some of the larger 30-50 pounders this week finally. All released.

Not too far away and still in relatively shallow water, the biggest and best surprise were the wahoo. It’s about that time of the year and the speedsters were hitting live bait as well as trolled Rapalas and were nice sized 20-40 pound fish with some of our pangas getting multiple fish.

BAHIA MAGDALENA REPORT

We had Eric Skinner and his son, Nathan out for a few days working those incredible mangroves at the shallow end of Bahia Magdalena on the Baja Pacific side this past week for a few days. In fact, as you’re reading this, they’re still out there. They got more than a dozen different species the first 2 days including, corvina, snapper, pargo, cabrilla, grouper and bay bass on light tackle.

Bahia Magdalena offers hundreds of square miles of changing current, sloughs, channels and impenetrable mangroves holding a multitude of species in the shallow waters.

One a single day, they estimated they hooked more than 50 fish releasing most and donating others and, of course, keeping some for dinner. Here’s a layer of fish sitting on a bed of ice in the ice chest with about a 1/2 dozen different species.

Nathan and dad, Eric, fishing right up in the mangrove bushes were catching garopa (grouper) like these and releasing most.

A good day back at the fish cleaning table!

That’s a mess of corvina, plus pargo, grouper and even a halibut. Most fish had been released.

Colorful grouper with Erik Skinner.

As mentioned, at the time of doing this report, they still had a few more days fishing Mag Bay so we’ll have more updates in next week’s report.

FISH BITE!…except when they dont!

MEXICAN MINUTE VIDEO REPORT

BIG PICTURE and the REST of the STORY…

Paul Nagata from San Francisco makes at least 1 trip a year with Tailhunter in La Paz. He was fishing off the south end of Cerralvo Island with Captain Pancho of the Tailhunter Fleet in an area that had been producing some yellowtail in the shallow bank at South Point. Not having much luck on live bait, they decided to make one more drift over the spot although it was already late in the afternoon. The big tuna bit and towed the panga for 2 hours on 50-pound test, but a very light rod! Paul and Captain Pancho handed the rod back-and-forth every 20 minutes.

Big fish in the rocks! Even Pancho got to pull on some fish this week. A solid cabrilla going onto the grill.

Paul had quite a week taking 8 different species of fish including this trophy cabrilla over the reef .

Variety on the cutting table! Cabrilla, pargo liso and snapper!

We had a schitzophrenic Easter Week of weather and fishing. Although the sun was out, we had 4 days of windy rough conditions and 3 days that were reasonably fishable.

Consequently, the fishing reports reflected the conditions. The days when the weather smiled, we had some banner fishing with lots of variety that included some fantastic inshore fishing including trophy-sized cabrilla and pargo ( big mullet snapper and barred pargo) as well as yellowtail, yellow snapper, several species of bonito and jack crevalle. Most caught either with live bait or slow trolling Rapalas over the rocky shallow areas close to shore.

Additionally, blue water species like dorado and wahoo also bit and one of our anglers nailed a big 108-pound yellowfin tuna (he had a scale) on a caballito that he fought for 2 hours.

On the days when the winds slammed, we were reduced to trolling because bait was impossible to obtain. Winds also prevented us from getting to some of the hotter fishing spots.

This coming week looks a little more promising. We have alot more folks fishing this week as more anglers start coming into town and the season opens up. Will hopefully have more and better photos in the next report!

“HOLD EVERYTHING!” (WINTER’s NOT DONE)

THE MEXICAN MINUTE VIDEO REPORT

THE BIG PICTURE and REST OF THE STORY…

Now this is a yellowtail! Just off Espirito Santo Island, Desmond Sjaufoekloy took this hefty beast earlier in the week.

Cabrilla like this tasty trophy are on the chew right now in the rocky areas. Jeff Brown poses with a beauty.

Desmond took this fat cabrilla to dinner at our Tailhunter Restaurant.

Captain Joel with Rod Brown and a nice mix of yellowtail, barred pargo and snapper.

Just when we were getting all comfortable and figured winter was done with us, I had a feeling she still had a few gusts left in her. Sure enough, like “Game or Thrones” winter came back to remind us we’re not quite out’ve range yet.

The week started out sort or OK. But we could tell it was going to ramp up again. Our folks got a nice mix of fish including yellowtail, some big fat cabrilla and other species plus a smattering of dorado.

But, with each day, the winds got stronger. Towards the latter part of the week, it was not just gusting, it was ripping and even the La Paz Port Captain shut down all boat traffic. No fishing…diving…swimming with whale sharks…no boats coming in and out.

And, I get it. Can’t blame him. It was blowing white caps even in the bay, even with the sun out. Better to err on the side of safety. Heck, even on the “calmer” days our folks were getting bounced and wet.

It did calm down just a tad by the end of the week, but not much and about the only thing we could raise in the rough water was bonito.

CRAZY VARIETY FOR 2nd STRAIGHT WEEK!

Mexican Minute Video Report

The Big Picture and the Rest of the Story…

Micah Pettit from Utah came down with his dad for his first trip with us although dad fishes with us several times a year. Micah stuck it to this tough yellowtail just outside Bahia Muertos his first day along with snapper, cabrilla and sierra.

Our amigo, Rod Brown from Alaska has been coming to fish with us for over a dozen years and usually during the spring . Along with nice yellowtail, he put this trophy barred pargo in the box fishing around Espirito Santo Island north of La Paz over the rocks.

From Minnesota, Jeff Brown is a pretty good fisherman on our La Paz waters and always does well as he poses with one of his nice yellowtail.

This type of rack of fish is not unusual this time of year when we can end up with alot of variety. Here you see yellowtail, yellow snapper, sierra, cabrilla and barred pargo.

Our popular Captain Joel has reason to smile after putting the gaff to Jeff’s trophy barred pargo. That’s Espirito Santo Island in the background.

Coleman Wadsworth shows off his catch including this yellowtail plus some great eating variety on the boar behind him including rockfish like snapper, cabrilla and pargo.

Incredible variety this week as we hit a 2nd good week of action. It’s what we call “transitional” time although it usually doesn’t hit until about next month. However, it’s the time of the fishing season when it’s not winter anymore and not summer quite yet in the water.

Consequently, you still have the ability to catch cold-water species like cabrilla, pargo, sierra, yellowtail, amberjack, snapper and more as they still linger. However, warm water species like dorado, tuna, wahoo, billfish, larger roosterfish are no starting to move in as well as surface waters warm.

Add in bonito, jack crevalle, skipjack and other year-round species and you get a lot of variety right now and that’s the kind of week we just had with great action on a number of different kinds of fish.

You may not get a lot of any one species, but you could finish a day with 6, 8, 10 or more different species in the box at the end of the day. The boat right next to you have have another 3 or 4 different species. The next day you get completely different species. It makes for some fun fishing.

Still not a lot of anglers out on the water, but the ones we did have out took yellowtail, barred pargo, dog-tooth snapper, sierra, amberjack, bonito, jack crevalle, roosterfish (released), yellow snapper, cabrilla as well as tuna (lost) and wahoo (lost). Signs of striped marlin were also seen.

Biggest problem is that many of the fish are in shallow water right now or over structure so lots of big fish are getting lost in the rocks but they’re willng to bite.

Here’s what one of our anglers had to say:

“Another great day of fishing. We caught almost 70 mackerel for bait this morning. For the third day in a row we ran out of bait by 1 o’clock because of just too many hook-ups! . Today’s catch included 7 yellowtail, 5 nice sized cabrilla, one large barred pargo, and one sierra. The fish were tough on our equipment. The first thing they do is run for he rocks. We lost more than we boated…We also snapped one of the heavy rods on a hook set. This has never happened before!”

Despite the great fishing this week, don’t say good-bye just yet to those windy days of winter…Sunday was pretty rough and blustery again. Will keep an eye out for you. Stay tuned.

BAHIA MAGDALENA FISHING

We were able to send out our first anglers of the season over to the Pacific side to light-tackle fish the mangroves in the shallows of Bahia Magdalena and they had a spectacular time. Using live bait, they had 50-60 fish days catching, releasing and donating much of their catch and also losing many fish in the tangles of roots and underwater structure.